http://www.csr.ists.ca/csr/press/ird_pr.html (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)Cyberspace Research (CsR) of North York, Ontario, has been awarded a contract with The McKinley Group, Inc., of Berkeley, California, for the development of a database of resources available over the Internet, the worldwide network of computer networks.
The database is aimed to fill a vacuum caused by the tremendous growth of the Internet in general, and the Internet's information retrieval system, the World-Wide Web, in particular. This growth has produced a multi-fold increase in the amount of information available, but with no easy way for the average computer user to find where and how to retrieve it.
The database will take the form of a publication having a similar format to a telephone book and will be available both as a book and on-line. The publication will list the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), the Internet's equivalent of a phone number, for each entry in the database. By using this database, computer users can easily obtain a list of what Internet sites offer services in a particular subject and what URL they need to point their computer software to.
CsR's role in the contract will be to surf the Internet using net-navigator software such as Mosaic. For each site a survey form will be completed. These data will comprise the basis of the publication produced by The McKinley Group.
Each survey form completed by CsR staff will be expected to meet quality standards imposed by The McKinley Group. To facilitate this quality control, CsR has developed software that allows for data entry by the surfers and database management by supervisors using the Mosaic program as an interface. The software consists of a suite of programs written in Perl (a UNIX text processing and database management language) and documents written the HyperText Mark-up Language (the text retrieval system that forms the basis of the World-Wide Web). The development of the software suite was made possible by CsR's recognized expertise in World-Wide Web applications.
The contract is for CsR is valued at US$10,000 with the possibility of extending the contract upon completion. The Project Manager for this contract is Mr. Benjamin Sugars, who will oversee daily activities of the project team as well Quality Assurance. Mr. Benoit Turgeon will act as Program Manager.